Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of money with Alpha. This is going to be a bit more of an interactive one this week I've been getting lots of questions around how do I get the time to do all the things I do in terms of, like, all the stuff I make?
Um, as you've probably guessed, I'm very conscious about what I consume. And also, to be honest, sometimes it's just easier to make things yourself because you know exactly what's in it and there's so many choices of stuff and it's just easier to do it yourself sometimes as well. So the three things I'm going to go through in today's episode are, uh, making your own vegan dark chocolate, uh, making body scrub, and also making your own almond milk.
And these are from just standard recipes I found online and that I've used again and again. And I've sort of figured out what works for me as well. And I've also done a previous episode on making your own spelt sourdough bread. So I'll put a link to that in case you missed that and you're interested in it because I make my bread one to two times a week.
I actually just made a loaf yesterday and, um, it does work better in warmer climates. But I've since figured out what to do about getting a heat box. But anyway, so for today, I'm going to start with the chocolate. So it's really, really simple. All I do, if you have a bain marie, use that.
Uh, otherwise I make m shift my own. I literally just use a, uh, bowl, heatproof bowl and then just a saucepan, fill it with water, put the bowl on it and then melt. And this is just a small, um, amount first. But you just get some cacao butter. I use this brand.
I get it off Amazon. You can get it from health food shops. I also sometimes get mine from the local, so health shop as well, the organic shop. And you just put 50 grams of these little buttons in or any other way you find. I found it in chunks as well.
So however it comes, as long as it's raw, um, preferably organic, and just the cacao butter. So you put 50 grams of that into your bain marie and liquefy it. So put it on the stove. Once it's liquefied, you get your whisk. I add in again. I use organic maple syrup.
I get this from Costco. Um, I put in for the 50 grams of cacao butter, I use an 8th of a cup of maple syrup. Put that in while it's hot on the stove and stir it up. I then get organic cacao powder, just raw cacao powder. And this is 25 grams of that.
And then I sift it still on the stove. And for this, you have to be actively stirring. So you sift it over the stove. Stir it, stir it. You'll see it thicken. And, uh, that's good. But keep it on the stove because it's gonna melt, it's gonna solidify quite quickly.
So you need to keep the heat there and then take it off the heat, pour it into a mold. I have a variety of molds. You can get chocolate, silicone molds, pretty much any kitchenware shop. Uh, and whichever shape you like, you can add in. Once it's off the stove, I add in either.
So the datera wild orange is really delicious with the chocolate. Um, the deterra peppermint oil is also really nice. And these are food grade oils that you can consume. Sometimes I'll put in some vanilla essence, if I just want a bit of extra vanilla flavour. Uh, and then once you've poured it into the mold, then you put it in the fridge.
A few hours later, there's your chocolate. And it's the most delicious chocolate that melts on your tongue. Oh, so yummy. So that's, that's chocolate. So that one's pretty easy. I'll put all of the recipes in the, in the show notes as well. So you have that. The next one is almond milk.
Really, really simple as well. So I just get spray free, insecticide free almonds from our local health food shop. And I take 160 grams of almonds, um, in, just cover them in water and then overnight you can wait 8 hours. But I usually do overnight because it's just easier rather than thinking about the 8 hours, once they've soaked over that eight hour overnight period, drain them, give them a bit of a wash, put them in a blender.
I use my thermomix, put, uh, them in a blender, add in three cups of water, just a quick dash of salt. I use himalayan salt and blend it up and just blend it until it's liquidy, usually about 30 seconds of like a high speed blender. Or to do it.
And then I take a bowl and a nut milk bag. You can get these from pretty much any standard health food shop as well. And then I pour into the nut bag and then I squeeze it out. Then I get the, the liquid. From that volume, I get about just under, uh, a litre of milk.
So I've bought these little 250 ML bottles. I fill each bottle up and I store it in the freezer. So whenever I need one, I just pull it out the night before. And then I have my milk for the morning. And then with what's left, you have almond meal.
So I then have that. I dry it out first and then I store it and I use it in baking. So you're not actually wasting anything. So that's your almond milk. Nice and simple. But the key is to have, um. I mean, you can get something else, like muslin perhaps would do it, but I get a proper nut bag.
Cause then it's got the fine holes in it, fabric. And then you just wash this out when you're done. The next one is body scrub. And again, really, really simple key ingredients is himalayan salt. Again, I get this from Costco and it's really quite inexpensive. Um, I get some pure organic jojoba oil.
Um, that one is beautiful. So I get that one. You can search for it. I get that one off Amazon because I haven't found it anywhere else. And I use a variety of deterra oils depending on what smells. I actually really like grapefruit. Grapefruit, lavender, peppermint. You can do whatever kind of combination you like.
You just have a smell and just sort of scent it out. I do like the citrusy kind of scents, though. Now this one, I will read the recipe, though, because I haven't made this one for a little while because it lasts a long time. So I do 300 grams of the salt, 55 grams.
I do like to weigh things rather than just a cup. I like to be a bit more precise. So 300 grams of the salt, 55 grams of the oil, the jojoba oil, and then about 45 drops of whichever oils you like the smell of. And you literally just stir it all up and bingo, you're done.
And this is because it's super fine salt that I use. I can actually even use it on my face. And it is so moisturizing when I've used it on my body in the shower. I don't need to use moisturizer afterwards because I've exfoliated and moisturized my skin in the one go.
So it's actually really, really cool. Um, but I really love making what I eat. I make a lot of other things as well. My recipe books, I will show you because I'll give you a little bit of a tour while we're at it. I have my key recipe books here.
Um, these are, the vegetarian ones are mine because I'm vegetarian. Um, and then we have obviously, the other books are my husband's because he likes to cook the meat dishes. And then I love Doctor Libby Weaver's books as well, especially if you want to go, um, gluten free, vegan, and, um, no refined sugar as well.
Really, really good recipes. Big fan of replacing sweeteners. So I don't use refined sugar in anything. I am not what you would consider completely sugar free. I would love to get to that point. I'm, uh, not quite there yet, so I still use maple syrup and sometimes honey, um, and sometimes coconut sugar, if I need a dry, um, sweetener.
I have found maple sugar sometimes, but it's not as easy to find. Um, but quite often I will also replace something like, for instance, I make these, um, bliss balls for my daughter that I used to buy, and I just replaced the chocolate in it with dates and she didn't even seem to notice.
So it's now dates and, um, beeson or chickpea flour, tapioca flour. Um, what else do I put in there? A bit of coconut sugar. Almonds. Um, not cashew, sorry. Um, macadamias are also really nice because they're also quite rich. Um, and, yeah, some water and some vanilla. And you can blend all that together, let it sit in the fridge, and then turn it into balls, cover it in some desiccated coconut, and you've got your beautiful bliss balls as well.
So there's so many different options of things that you can do. Um, but it's just preparing it. And when you do it regularly, it makes it so much easier. Like, for instance, I give my daughter a rumble every day for school. Um, and I also make these, um, almond shortbread, um, biscuits as well.
Um, I make muesli slice, and instead of butter, I use coconut oil, which I actually really like. So I make her chocolate brownies. Um, and this recipe actually came through from Philly, from functional medicine. It's actually the best brownie recipe. It's the one she likes the most. And it's mainly coconut oil.
So it's dairy free. You can put gluten free, um, flour. I tend to use spelt flour because we don't have a gluten intolerance, as far as I know, in our house. Uh, and then some coconut sugar in there and cacao powder and a bit of vanilla and some eggs.
Uh, and you mix it all up, pop it in a pan in the oven for if you want it moist, 25 minutes. Um, and if not, if you want it a bit drier and it becomes a bit more like cake, then it's about 30 minutes. But, yeah, so even things like that, it's just getting into that rhythm and having those ingredients on hand.
Like everything you see here, I always have these ingredients. So anytime I run low, I then just buy that replacement just like you do with any other, um, groceries that you buy. When it runs out, you just replace it and buy more. Um, but if I have these ingredients always on hand, then it's always easy for me to make these dishes.
So I've always got the almonds. I've got so many different types of nuts. I've got lots of different types of flour in the cupboard as well. And it just makes it a bit easier when you're like, okay, you know what I want to make? I'm running out of almond milk.
I need to make some more almond milk. You've got the almonds. You can literally just have to think about it the night before so that you can soak it. And if not, sometimes you can just soak the almonds in the morning, and then by the afternoon, it's easy to just chuck it in the blender, make your almond milk.
So it's. Again, it's the mental concept behind a lot of this. And sometimes it is cheaper as well. But I'm also a firm believer in value versus cost, and that you can use cost in a number of different ways. So whether it's actual monetary cost or whether it's the cost of the quality on your body.
So I, like I said, with this belt bread, it was actually cheaper to make it myself than to buy, especially with the cost of some of the breads. Now, like, I walked into a shop the other day, and they had these artisan, um, spelt bread, and it was $12 a loaf.
I was like, oh, my gosh. We go through, you know, my husband's a bread eater, and so is my daughter, and I think we go through, like, a loaf and a half a week. I was like, that's. And sometimes two loaves. I was like, that's like $24 a week just on bread.
And so. And even with the chocolate too, like, the, the proper, like, really nice dark chocolate, it's expensive. It's upwards of $50 a kilo. So here I'm, you know, and because it's quite rich, the flavor, you need, like one, maybe two pieces, and you're satiated. Like, it's, it's so much nicer.
And then I know I'm also not eating refined sugar, I'm not eating soy, because pretty much all of the chocolates have soy lecithin in it. So if you've got a soy intolerance, you can make this and avoid that. Um, so the emulsifier is not there. It does mean that because all of this is pretty much preservative free, apart from the body scrub, because it's all salt.
Um, you do need to consume it regularly and to not store it for months and months and months. I mean, obviously, the almond milk, I have it in the freezer. Ah, sometimes for months, and it's fine in the freezer. But if I left it in the fridge, it would curdle within about three days because there's no preservatives.
There's like a little splash of salt in there. So you just got to think about your lifestyle and just a little bit of extra planning and making sure you have those ingredients. And these are all shelf life ingredients as well. They're not like things that you have to have in the fridge that will go off.
These are things you can have in your cupboard for months and they're still okay. Um, that said, though, I do leave the cocoa buttons in, um, our wine fridge because that's where I like to store my chocolate as well. So my husband has it for the wine, I use it for the chocolate.
Although I've been known to have a little glass here and there. Um, but, yeah, but you do just need to make sure that you store that. That's probably the only item that's a little bit sensitive to temperature. But, yeah, if there's any other recipes that you want to know about, please let me know, because either I've tried it, because I did try to make my own milk.
Sorry, my own yogurt didn't work. Um, I'm still trying to figure out if I'm going to try it again. I contemplated making my own mayonnaise so that I could use no sugar and olive oil, but I since found a brand that does that. So I was like, I don't need to make it.
I could just buy it because I found a brand that actually has the ingredients that I'm okay with. And so. But there's other things too. Like, there's even chocolate dipping sauce that I've found. This is actually a really cool recipe book. Love this recipe book. It's a big, heavy one.
It's women's weekly vegan. I found this at Aldi, um, probably about a year, well, maybe two years ago now for like $20. Um, but it's really good as well. So there's, there's lots, lots you can do. Just takes a little bit of thought and a little bit of planning and a bit of inspiration.
Sometimes you can even just go, you know, put your what's in your cupboard into chat GPT and ask them for a low sugar, um, you know, gluten free dairy. Feel like you can ask for recipes for inspiration, but I like to just do it the old fashioned way. Which old fashioned way, which is now just, you know, search it, whether you use Google or bing or edge or whatever it is that you use.
Um, then, yeah, just see what's online and just give them a try. You never know. But like I said, I've tried lots of different. Like, I know I have a good gluten free, dairy free waffle recipe, gluten free, dairy free cupcakes recipe. So if you're after anything, let me know.
I may have already found it and I can share it with you. All right, well, that was today. If you're listening to this and you would really like to see this, I will put the link to, um, the video so that you can actually watch it as well because it is probably a little bit more fun to actually see what I'm doing because I'm in my kitchen and showing you how I do what I do.
Okay. Enjoy the rest of your week.
